


thirteen tracks

by goodnightfern



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x19, Led Zeppelin - Freeform, M/M, Music, episode coda, fucking mix tape angst, mix tapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 21:28:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10750158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightfern/pseuds/goodnightfern
Summary: There's a way to listen to music, something Dean has taught him on long stretches of highway. Dean isn't aware of all the things he teaches Cas, but it goes something like this.





	thirteen tracks

**Author's Note:**

> *violent coughing*
> 
> let me just... get this out there..... ok. ok. it's fine. we're fine. i guess i headcanoned that these tapes are really old and very special to dean. does cas's truck even have a cassette player? i don't know. im just trying to have a breakdown here.

Human music doesn't compare to the Song in Heaven, but Cas is getting used to it. Might even like it. There's a way to listen to music, something Dean has taught him on long stretches of highway. Dean isn't aware of all the things he teaches Cas, but it goes something like this.

Tape goes in the player. Hands go on the wheel. Eyes on the road and foot on the gas. You don't have to think of anything else. Don't think about where you're going or where you've been or the man on the seat next to you or in the back or who isn't here. Let the music color in your thoughts. Let the music do the thinking. 

It's not easy. But Dean gave him this tape, so Cas knows. This is something worth listening to. These are thoughts worth having.

Led Zeppelin is Dean's band. Same as his mother's before him. It's the soundtrack to memories Dean doesn't even know he has, the things Cas knows that Dean will never, ever even know that Cas knows.

Touching a soul does that kind of thing to an angel. 

The first track on the tape is something Dean first heard in a bouncy swing on the kitchen floor in Kansas. Mary was washing plates from breakfast and set him down, just for a moment, to get the house somewhat clean. It was a warm Tuesday morning, John was out and Mary put on her music to work to. But the first time Dean remembers hearing this song was in the back seat of the Impala. It's a softer piece, gentle and folksy. All about visiting California, to find a girl and find a hope and just find something out there. A good start to the drive. Cas is in the mountains of Montana, wide-open spaces where the music can frolic.

The next song is also about driving and traveling and rambling. Another song about finding a girl. There are references in here to some fantasy novels, the name of which escapes Cas, but he knows Dean read them once during a hot soggy summer spent in the Carolinas. Sam got the books from the library and forgot to return them, and Dean found them beneath a mountain of laundry. He was sixteen years old and he'd read through them quicker than he thought possible. 

The next song is about driving into town to break hearts or something. It's fun and fast-paced and something that makes Dean feel light on his feet and smooth in the charm. 

Song four starts off quick and staccato-like, gentle strums that build on top of each other to an ultimately satisfying melody. Then the queen of light takes her bow, and the prince of peace walks the night alone. It's late afternoon, but this sounds like a song to listen to in the quiet peace before battle. In the last night of quiet before the chaos. 

Then comes a heavy, hollow sort of drumbeat, and the fun is gone. Now the levee is breaking and there's no place to run and the world is about to end. Kind of heavy. Cas wonders how Dean put this tape together. If there was supposed to be a theme or anything. It makes sense, he supposes, when he follows the path of Dean's life. The readying for the journey, the quest, the romance of the lifestyle. But it's been raining the whole time, and Cas only realizes it now.

The levee breaks as Cas crosses the border into Idaho. Further and further away from his home, where he doesn't know which way to go, and now the singer is wailing again. And now it's nobody's fault but mine, nobody's fault but their own, and how many more times will Cas keep doing this thing where he drives like this, further and further away, endless circles of drum and guitar, building and falling up and down and back around and leaving Cas waiting, wondering.

About to turn off the tape, honestly. It's tiring and Cas is low on gas. So he turns it off and comes back to reality, back to white lights against the night and the slick of credit-card plastic and waiting for the tank to fill. Foot tapping and hands shoved in pockets and all Cas wants to do is get back on the road. Keep going.

Once he hits play again, once he's back in the car and on the way, something swells and welcomes him back. Cas can breathe again. His hands loosen on the wheel, and even if the sun refuses to shine, there will still be you and me. Hand in mine, we walk the miles. But there's no hand on the passenger seat here. And Cas thinks of Dean listening to this song, alone at night, in his bedroom in the bunker. Dean's careful hands on the tape machine. Pressing play. 

The music quiets and suddenly Cas is very small. It fades to nothing and Cas fades with it.

The next song is odd. Cas listens to it three times over before he realizes it's all about sex. Sometimes innuendo escapes him. He never knew citrus fruit could imply anything, but Dean teaches Cas new things all the time, sometimes without even being aware. When Dean was fifteen this song made him feel a little awkward and sweaty and maybe Cas's hands are a little looser on the wheel. 

The last track is more comfortable, easy to settle into. As Cas drives under the stars he thinks of time and change, how it used to be. How it is now. Ten years gone, and here Cas is, driving a human car listening to human music and thinking about a human and it catches in his throat sometimes, how much he's changed. Ten years, is it? How long has he known Dean?

Do you ever really need somebody? the song asks, and Cas thinks he's learning the answer. Cas thinks he's known it for a damn long time.

The tape ends and Cas is left in silence. Suddenly he's tired. It would be good to just - recharge, a bit. Not sleep. Cas doesn't need to sleep. The music comes back at night, though, when he's lying on a motel bed in the dark simply thinking, and it isn't until Cas wakes up on top of the bedclothes that he realizes yeah, he slept.

There's a text from Dean on his phone that Cas doesn't know if he should answer. Turns out all he wants to know about is the tape. 

_You know you have to flip them over, right?_

Cas didn't know that. 

Back in the truck, Cas takes the tape out and considers flipping it. Taps his finger on the side of it absentmindedly. Looks at Dean's slanted handwriting and intentional misspellings and thinks maybe - maybe he'll just give it until tomorrow.

Yeah.

But he never quite gets around to it, and then Cas isn't in his truck for a long time, and then he has sixteen missed calls and texts that start off angry and fade away and the odd late-night one and then there's the tape. Still on the driver's seat. If Cas really wanted, he could pick it up. Flip it over and listen to the other half. See what else Dean has for him.

Cas flips the tape in his hands. Slips it into the glove compartment and closes it. Dean will be wanting it back, he's sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> the other side was just thirty minutes of poetry reading amirite


End file.
